


life in a glasshouse

by 11dishwashers



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Trauma, archeologist! au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 12:06:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11035863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11dishwashers/pseuds/11dishwashers
Summary: kyungsoo gets a job on site. it's good for him, when he allows it to be.





	life in a glasshouse

dead things in the ground, they strike a chord with kyungsoo, like the helix fossils and the seashells.

they all belonged to someone or something at one point, the wooden spinning tops of long-dead children and the bones of a pet dog. 

but then, things become jobs. jobs, as you know, ruin everything and no one's satisfied with them. as kyungsoo scans over another page of the finds in banweolsung, he can't agree more. maybe they didn't need to tack the same value to a rock than to a ruby necklace. maybe the whole "geology" thing's a huge waste of time on the archeology department's part.

so what does kyungsoo like, if not shitty pieces of geode? absolutely fuck all.

 

 

 

he doesn't wear coats in the winter. it's not a problem, except for when the space heater breaks and a spare blanket isn't within a (short) arm's reach from his bed. this is mostly because he doesn't go out. the snow covers the dirt and makes it too tough to dig. the thought of going to a bar makes him jealous, because he can't go to such constricting places, with the people everywhere and the sweatiness of his figurative hands and how loud the figurative chattering would be and the figurative, entirely fictional way his heart starts to beat too fast like he wants to spend the rest of his life with a bar and wake up next to one every morning in a starspangled new adult love story.

it's for this reason that jongdae doesn't hassle him or get on his case, doesn't treat him like an outlet for the most part, doesn't invite him to joonmyun's party at new years.

Instead, he stays at home and wonders what it would be like if seoul wasn't experiencing a white holiday. probably washing dirt out from under his fingernails, dreaming about discovering the next tombs that might not even exist down there. he turns on the television to the countdown show when they reach the number '6' and sits back with a bottle of vodka even though it's bad for his heart, his mood and his family. there's something so appealing about alcohol to the sad and low these days, or maybe always, thoughts of 'i might not be alive to experience the consequences anyway' go through his head as he takes a swig. he worries about becoming his mother sometimes, but even his liver would give out by the time he enters his forties.

 

once he woke up on a park bench. not even a security guard or park ranger gave enough of a fuck to wake him up. it was the sort of experience people retell in rehab following the 'why are you here?' questions, except kyungsoo's never been able to look at himself objectively and therefore didn't consider himself a *drunk*.

 

but even still, he hopes he won't remember new years. his heart does little flips whenever he takes another percent of alcohol into his blood stream and a neighbour might have complained about the volume of the television.

The cute blonde onscreen read squeals the number ‘1’ out at the same time kyungsoo raised his glass by two inches. 

“Here’s to 1998,” he grumbles, tipping his head back with the bottle in his hands. “Another shit year.”

 

he wakes up on january 2nd 1998 with an odd fuzzy feeling on his chest. for a moment, he wonders if he somehow made it to a&e or if jongdae had some foresight and purchased a defibrallator.

as it turns out, neither, there's just a blanket on him now. he smiles, then remembers that he slept through an entire day and smiles wider. time well spent, honestly, burning through another day without even realising it is a dream come true.

it's jongdae who puts the wet dishcloth on his forehead. kyungsoo goes to protest but finds his vocal chords unusable so early in the morning.

"you've given yourself a fever," jongdae says and kyungsoo only sees him as pixels, like the genitals on japanese pornstars except it's a different kind of dick. or beloved friend, kyungsoo should say, since he's the one who makes jongdae so worried. "by the way, seungsoo paged you."

ah, seungsoo. nothing kyungsoo's willing to think about right now, or ever. he decides to get a new number tomorrow.

"did you listen to it?" he asks and his voice comes out extra nasally through his apparent flu. at one point, joonmyun tried to tell him he had a 'singer's voice' and kyungsoo declined because 1-jongdae was sensitive about such things and 2-it wasn't true aside from some drunken kareoke videos(he never knew the words in the morning).

"no, but promise me you will."

 

 

jongdae's nice, and that's the whole catch in this friendship. he's nice and it makes kyungsoo feel guilty whenever he has to do shitty things out of self assurance. he needs to change his number soon, mostly for himself but for jongdae's sake too(which loops right back around to being about himself again).

the message gets deleted before he listens.

 

 

january is an especially boring month for kyungsoo whenever it's around. he packs bags at the supermarket to make some cash that isn't even a split price for the rent. joonmyun doesn't like it but he never tells kyungsoo so.

and still, the doctorate hangs on his bedroom wall like some sort of participation trophy. 'yes you know about the types of teeth typically found in archeological sites, but that doesn't mean you've done anything worthwhile,' is what it says to him whenever he takes a minute out of his life to depress himself further. he's good at what he does. he even, once, had notions of going to australia to find the next best thing to the rottnest island. notions, as a word choice, imply he never followed through.

...

the snow outside still falls at a steady pace, something like kyungsoo's seasonal depression=mx+c, he tries to sleep off some of the weekend underneath his duvets where it's for the most part warm. his feet stick out at the bottom but he can't really afford to buy luxuries like new duvets on the budget he's got.

joonmyun comes over in excessive amounts, cleaning the cooking trays and spraying kyungsoo's room with air freshener when he thinks kyungsoo's not awake. he usually isn't but sometimes, well, he wakes up to the taste of chemical roses.

 

joonmyun is too kind hearted to just 'tolerate' kyungsoo, rather, he's friendly to kyungsoo and kyungsoo's friendly to him. for jongdae's sake, which loops back around and becomes his own.

does it matter? aren't all humans built like that? sure kyungsoo has some faulty wires here and there but his brain, when not intoxicated, functions as is.

and he likes when jongdae's happpy because it keeps him from catching himself with red hands.

nevertheless, he cooks jongdae dinner at least twice a week. he's good enough at cooking the basics and sometimes he get's complimented on it. which is fine, when it's true.

 

 

 

february comes and with it, the rain, almost transforming the street he sometimes sees outside his window into a scene from ponyo. it makes him a bit more satisfied in the snow, but seasonal depression hits hard and he can't find his hands to hit back. in any case, no more salt on the roads. he feels bad for the slugs during snowdays when the big plowtruck comes along and his kindly, swinger(judging by their age and unhappy marraige) neighbours don't use their bags of salt to sprinkle over their grandkids' chips but instead to stop the ice from blocking up the drive.

kyungsoo does have a car, with half a tank of gas left and a family of spiders living in his winshield. he doesn't have anywhere to take it.

put yourself in kyungsoo's shoes and consider; the steering wheel feels your hands and you kick back like you've just gone to a free house instead of a car going 80 miles per hour. the usual barriers look easier to break than usual, with their red/white swirls and orange lights. you speed up and go 90 mph, your life does not get read to you like a poem in your final moments but instead you see a quick highlight reel on a cheap vhs tape before the car actually goes over the cliff. you may or may not be drunk, the choice is there. 

that's his dream, and he makes it a tactless fact, telling jongdae sometimes like he's saying 'i can't pay the rent this month', then saying just that after. but, he reasons, he's nice to jongdae. 

february makes the car driveable again and it sits in the driveway as the option it is.

 

he get's a letter for the first time since before the snow the very morning his eyes keep drifting towards his car, and it makes him drop his carkeys in the basket by the door.

 

 

"you got accepted? that's great!" and for once jongdae lets kyungsoo order soju off the a la carte menu.

"i know," kyungsoo replies, taking a slice of the courtesy free bread. "maybe now i'll actually get paid."

 

 

 

achaseong.

february 14th, while joonmyun cooks jongdae heart shaped pancakes, he sits at the kitchen table and researches every single piece of information he can find like it'll level up his digging skills somehow. 

achaseong, the opposite end of seoul, just a bit out of the way. 

 

 

it's february 16th when kyungsoo buys himself a coat, the first one he's had for a long time.

"looks good," joonmyun says when he sees it.

"don't lie."

 

 

he drives down on the half tank of gas and hopes for the best when he reaches the place. it's still going to be a trek, obvioulsy, which is why he packed light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

much, much later, after he's lead to the site and sat down with a cup of tea, the idea of work is brought up.

"you've done digs before?" asks the woman sitting across from him. she's wearing one of those ranch hats that you see on halloween costumes, the kind australians hang corks off. there's no mosquitos here anyway, kyungsoo supposes over their absence. 

krystal, she'd said, so kyungsoo has nothing but a first name to call her. it makes the whole "impersonal" thing just a bit harder, but he always finds his ways.

"yes," he responds and takes a sip of coffee like a fullstop to make it obvious his sentence is over. he doesn't have much else to say. he doesn't know what to say to pretty girls who take fashion tips from bear grylls. they're so high up in the mountains by this point that his heart goes a bit weird, but it's not because of her. he realises he never bought his medecine and jongdae had never mentioned it. 

"...right, that's good."

there's already a small cluster of archaelogists digging about the tape-marked dirt. the ones who are experienced somehow brush the sand away more impatiently than the newcomers, you can tell from how rough their hands are. kyungsoo checks and 70 percent of them wear glasses too far down their noses, so he pushes his up slightly. no need to look like that.

there's also a heap of backpacks in the corner, some pastel coloured from the volunteered college students, though the same could be said for the black bags with the badges. 

"should i start?" he asks, turning the cup in his hands, still not looking at krystal.

"go ahead, if you're sure you know enough."

 

the sand is starting to bother him but there's not much to do about that. he remembers the summer he got transferred to a dig site in rural south jeolla for the summer five years ago. back then his glasses were actually used, for reading and not for when he couldn't see right after waking up hung over. his spine wasn't permanently curved from spending hour upon hour chipping away at dirt that amounted to nothing. the air was clammier than here, where it's crisp from the starts of march dew, it makes him feel like he's underwater.

he keeps earphones in the whole time, and before he goes home that evening, admired the whole 6 centimeres of digging he accomplished.

he thanks krystal to stay on her good side and manages his way home after a trip to a gas station just east of achaseong. 

it's simple.

 

 

he goes home and jongdae gets joonmyun to order them pizza. for a moment, he thinks things might be looking up, for one thing he's washing dirt out from under his nails again.

another, he changed his landline's service providor and seungsoo hasn't caught on yet. he rightly thinks he's being ignored. the february weather still clouds up outside of the house and a heavy mist rolls up that you can only see under the porch lights, the bits of steam floating like weird ghosts or cumshots. he has to towel dry his hair when he walks inside.

 

but then, joonmyun hands him a bottle of soju. he probably knows he shouldn't, because he gives jongdae an apologetic smile that seems to say "at least he's making money now."

jongdae just shrugs, entirely bothered but returning to joonmyun's side like some sort of lost puppy. it runs kyungsoo out back to his bedroom where he sinks into bed, feet freezing off, bottle in his hand hanging by the side of the bed inbetween swigs.

it's not enough to make him drunk, but it's just enough to make him think he is, so he thinks 'i can be happy now' and it happens like that.

when he dreams, he dreams of nothing at all, but when he sees, he sees the dinosaur bones under the ground. he sees himself with x-ray sort of vision, eyes replaced by headlights, everything's in black and white. his mother asks him for a liver, and he says "i only have one, and it's for me to destroy."

"ungrateful child."

 

when jongdae sings, he sees no more, not rested, not even sleepy because he doesn't want to sleep at this point. 

jongdae's always been talented, always the sort of kid to make his crushes oddly flowing mixtapes with the smiths on it. kyungsoo keeps his under his bed and only listens to it when he's feeling particurily lonely and he doesn't want the alcohol to make his thoughts stray.

 

 

 

 

once, kyungsoo almost moved to beijing. let that be said, and now we'll move on, forgetting about that detail like kyungsoo does when he's drunk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

joonmyun heats him up one of those heart shaped pancakes definitely not meant for him and serves it with maple syrup, probably his paternal instincts kicking in when he finds the bottle rolling back and forth on kyungsoo's chest as he lies on the sofa. it's completely downed.

"didn't you have a bottle last night?" asks joonmyun, taking the bottle and putting it somewhere- like it's full and he's trying to hide it from kyungsoo. the damage is already done.

"you gave me it," kyungsoo replies, yawning and running a hand through his slightly-greasy slightly-droopy hair. that's how it ends up on a tuesday. life is stressful.

"that doesn't mean you could have another, and so early too..." and with that joonmyun pads back to the kitchen, grumbling about health and mindful thinking and made up concepts like "fucking alcoholic...". kyungsoo bets he feels bad for jongdae.

or maybe, he feels bad with jongdae. that's how kyungsoo remembers it being.

 

 

 

 

 

he's not drunk, as aftormentioned for a different situation involving a bottle of soju, he's not even tired. he feels ready to dig up the entire el dorado out there, it being a tuesday in february and all.

he's always hated february, it's not spring and not winter. the in betweens of everything makes him unsettled enough as it is. in between the school and the bus stop, inbetween the barbers and the home after a particularily choppy haircut, in between sober and tipsy, and more extreme, in between life and death. 

but this inbetween month, things are sort of working out in his favor. he likes looking for heirlooms of lost civilisations, likes playing music too loud from his earphones, maybe if he keeps that up he won't be able to hear his phone ring anymore. maybe he'll have stupid plastic hearing aids that won't match his skin tone properly.

that's not to say he's cured or whatever bullshit happens in every drama he's ever seen, he's not about to have 8 consecutive scarring flashbacks and a dramatic confession, he's not about to see the world and himself as perfect.

kyungsoo likes to think he's objective like that, not a pessimist, just "objective". jongdae calls him nice but "a bit in his head". kyungsoo doesn't think the shoe fits.

but somehow, he smiles at krystal as he ties his terribly worn laces before washing his brushes under the outdoor sink.

a few people are here from yesterday again, and kyungsoo smiles at them a bit too, because he's not on waving terms yet.

 

 

he works through until the afternoon and as the alcohol leaves his bloodstream he stops for a break, slumping against one of those cobblestone walls you see in irish postcards. it does not fall over with the wind that blows through it, instead it doesn't- toussle- kyungsoo's greasy hair, but makes it stick to him in different ways. archeology is hard work, he supposes, when he swipes his fringe a little to the left and feels himself sweat. or is it the mist? or-

"sitting by yourself?"

kyungsoo looks up and sees this man- maybe? is he an adult yet- sort of smiling down at him. kyungsoo knows the type but pushes the scowl to his brain-self instead, keeping the expression as indifferent as possible.

"i was," he replies. "unlesss that's about to change."

and the man(?) now sits next to him, his hair doesn't stick to his head but curls in odd fluffs. he keeps twirling it between his index finger and thumb. he looks like the sort of man you'd see play the lead in childhood-friends-meet-up-again-through-mysterious-slash-work-related-experiences drama, with his sort of frog eyes and friendly smile.

he's still a bit intimidating, kyungsoo realises, though maybe that's just his opinion on everyone. when he first saw joonmyun he thought that this was the kind of guy to carry switch blades on dates. oh, how wrong he was.

 

kyungsoo coughs and pulls at his collar a bit, not because it's a warm summer day that stupid teenagers go drinking on, but because he'd buttoned his shirt wrong this morning and the collar's too tight to handle.

this guy looks at him before speaking again. "you here on the dig?"

"what do you think?"

"i guess that would make sense..." he looks back to krystal, who's leaning in her chair. it's about to fall over but she stands up and fills the portable kettle again before it does. "hey, what's you name anyway?"

kyungsoo could lie, but he's saving the chance for the invetable later on. when people move him a bit too much, he likes to stop, to cut ties. he's tired honestly, after waking up so late and seeing so much in his unconcious state.

"do kyungsoo."

"ah, i'm jongin," says this guy who quickly becomes jongin, that little annoyance at the back of kyungsoo's brain.

"i should get back to work."

 

 

 

 

he digs a bit more but comes back with nothing much, krystal gathers a few people around the washing basins area and shows a small chunk of opholite off between two rubber-gloved fingers.

"look what jongin found," she says. "there could be more."

kyungsoo frowns and puts his coat on, still feeling plasticy and stifling, before checking if the unopened can has burst in his bag.

 

 

 

that night, jongdae cooks, and kyungsoo avoids it like the plague. he's singing in the kitchen again- like usual- joonmyun just beyond the door so he can hear but not see. sometimes you have to work the little things out like this- what to do if your significant other has a stage fright complex and a beautiful voice. some things in this world are flat out unfair, and kyungsoo thinks jongdae's voice is one of them. it's what brings his hand up so the alcohol can pour down his throat, because jongdae doesn't drink himself and someone has to.

 

 

 

 

that night, kyungsoo thinks about cocaine, and about the shoes and shoes strung together over the telephone wires. there's some rumours.

he can't afford it, and that's what keeps the bottle in his hands by the end of the night.

 

seungsoo finds his number. kyungsoo blocks it, then blocks it out.

 

 

 

by march, things have taken a turn for the worse. kyungsoo has yet to dig up the lost city of atlantis and his whole hand's gone to decline from constantly being around a shovel or glass. it stays clawed sometimes, making it difficult to write his landlord cheques, the one with the wife and the unhappiness. that's the one kyungsoo likes the best.

the other one, the wife herself, likes to nag and does not let things slide, more of a human than a doormat. she calls up to the house like a welldressed russian trophybride- pink coat and pink felt hat- then demands the ends of kyungsoo's alcohol fund. he pays for roughly a third of february's rent but helps with the dishes occasionally, providing his bargain of a personality and slow blinking to the household. keeps the cupboard beneath the telivision stocked with don't-make-me-say-it-again.

 

when kyungsoo returns from the dead the next morning, the first thing he does is check his paged messages.

"none," says the operator. kyungsoo puts the phone back on the hook before she can ask if he was expecting some, she had that peppy sort of voice, the one you accosiate with destiny's child merch. kyungsoo makes himself breakfast, since jongdae's off somewhere or other. maybe the office.

(where's joonmyun?)

 

 

 

"you got a light?" asks this woman he's attempting- somewhat- to walk past on his way up to the site.

he realises, just then, that he's that sort of person and it makes him swallow empty air that'd be assumedly full of smoke vapours. he has wide eyes, sometimes bloodshot, sometimes sunken, often surrounded by purple. he can see the resemblance.

"no. sorry."

 

 

kyungsoo doesn't talk in comas, and it makes him a bit uncomfortable as jongin hangs back by the kettle that kyungsoo's been eyeing for the past few minutes. he wants tea, and yet, jongin's there. 

kyungsoo doesn't talk in comas, but jongin does.

"and then i said, that's not the price on the box, and he said to me 'well it's the price i'm giving it!' so, i said, it's either this or nothing-"

he's talking about some sort of terrible yard sale experience where he tried to buy his friend a cd of the new boards of canada album. kyungsoo's never heard of them, but the only explanation he's given is "he's majoring in economics." does that tell it all?

it's not that jongin's annoying, unparticularily, it's that kyungsoo's not the type to find people not-annoying. he has a bias towards mutes and a disposition against any being able to pronounce 3+ syllable words in everyday conversations. and though jongin has a lisp, he's sure to manage, stretching out words as he gestures wildly. it's a serious wonder how he didn't break that ophelite earlier, and how he's the only one to have found anything.

"did you get it?"

"now, see, that's the thing, i ended up paying full price..."

"but you went and told me the story anyway?"

"kyungsoo, you love my stories," jongin responds. he smiles like the happy side on a greek cinema mask, and nothing but the sad side's left for kyungsoo. most of the time he doesn't wear it anyway.

"hmmmm..."

"speaking of, you never tell me stories."

"there's not many of them," kyungsoo responds and goes back to being invested in the task at hand- digging. 

 

 

jongdae isn't home until late that night, but when he's back, he's back with a crumpled shirt on and the smell of barfood.

"where did you go?" asks kyungsoo. he's lying on the sofa this time, wearing glasses because he'd never ended up taking them off. his face is tilted to the side, on the pillow, nothing on except for asphalt man.

"hey, that guy looks like you," jongdae drops his coat on a chair and points at the screen. it crackles slightly, like it's aware of the smart decision to avoid kim jongdae.

"i don't know what you're talking about, he's actually handsome," kyungsoo says. it comes out muffled through the matted fabric of the cushions. he forgets to ask jongdae why he was out for so long again. jongdae doesn't like talking about where he goes, and kyungsoo doesn't question it, by the look of things it's for his own good.

 

 

 

 

jongin doesn't seem like the type to become an archaeologist, but kyungsoo isn't about to say that and prompt conversation. he wonders what happened to himself, when he realises he never says "how are you" even though it's appropriate and a little something he's curious about.

 

jongin talks for the two of them most of the time. he blabbers on about what he ate for dinner last night and the daily adventures with his annoying landlady and her ban on pets. specifically, jongin's golden retriever, monggu.

"she really pisses me off, like yesterday she tried to cut our cable and i had to actually walk to her door."

kyungsoo hums in understanding and passes jongin the mug of boiling water, who adds a teaspoon of coffee ground.

"what happened then?" he actually asks.

"she told me she'd call the pound if i didn't do something about monggu!"

jongin is in the wrong, but kyungsoo's not going to tell him that, with the way things are going he's lucky he's still being talked to. 

 

 

 

the march weather is a bit dreary, but nothing compared to february, and kyungsoo get's seasonal depression in the form of in-between-moods. he stops wearing coats yet can't find a good replacement when it rains. he sees his mother asking for his liver yet doesn't hear her. seungsoo's been talking to jongdae, kyungsoo realises, when he hears a familiar voice in the sitting room. it's not muffled enough that it's indistuingashable.

once seungsoo got along with him, used to give kyungsoo his doubles of pokemon cards, used to avoid him at school like all good older brothers do.

let him get on with his life, shortlived from a young age, stayed by him when he got bloodtests even though the tubes snaking out of kyungsoo's hands freaked him out.

he went to the military. never forgot the smell of expired bandages but in a different way. got himself a girl who appreciated his kind personality. he cared about kyungsoo. he cares, maybe, about his girl now, about his little brother maybe, about his mother.

 

 

 

 

 

kyungsoo's car has the most mileage out of the households, even if he rarely goes out, it still has the miles ran up. he used to have to drive backwards through the neighbourhood when he borrowed his mother's car because the miles don't count backwards and he hates being exposed as a runaway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

jongin's nice, isn't he? he helps the younger archaelogists despite being one himself, won't get rid of monggu even though there's no way he'll be able to afford a new house if he get's evicted.

"why don't you go somewhere else?" kyungsoo asks one day, on their usual break. krystal's been more lenient than usual about it.

jongin laughs and counts the stripes on his long sleeves with his index finger. "nowhere to go, really."

 

kyungsoo drops it (and get's it maybe, too). 

 

it's the 16th of march, day before st. patrick's day (also known as the only time kyungsoo can drink his heart to decompression sickness and not get pitied looks), when he gets another call from seungsoo. yes, another, he lets it go to voicemail.

 

 

jongdae, wasted, slumps against kyungsoo. kyungsoo, wasted, slumps against joonmyun. joonmyun, sober, sighs.

"soo, you could probably.... move to ireland at this point," jongdae says and let's out a hiccup.

"wuh-what?"

"i don't know. you drink a lot, right?"

"...right?"

"that's what the irish do, right?"

"you're right, maybe i should go there and-"

 

 

 

 

 

jongin is distant sometimes.

sometimes, he doesn't bother with kyungsoo at all, he can keep to himself just fine, like a bottle with a working lid rather than a smashed bottle with a drinking problem and a weak heart.

it's okay, kyungsoo's heart is only weak physically, so he can deal with jongin leaving him alone all day. it's not like they're friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

when he gets home, he finds seungsoo outside the apartment door.

"what are you doing here?" asks kyungsoo, having half a mind to pretend to forget his name. he clutches the car keys harder, so they make cuts along his worn skin, they only bleed a bit.

"do," says seungsoo, brows furrowing like he can't comprehend seeing his brother again. it's true, they haven't met up for a while, and it could’ve been a while longer if seungsoo wasn't so stubborn.

"do," kyungsoo won't unlock his front door with seungsoo there, for fear of him somehow getting inside. his mother used to tell him that vampires can only enter houses if you invite them in. kyungsoo won't test that logic.

"mam died."

 

 

 

"oh, alright," kyungsoo replies, clutching his stomach slightly, like maybe he'll feel his liver through it. you know, he never thought he'd be the type to ruin things for himself, but here he is, destroying another organ because he's not complete anyway. when you're 90 percent complete, you're 100 percent incomplete, and kyungsoo likes the way it works. or resents it. whichever type of drunk he is.

"what do you mean, 'alright'? she's dead! and you never even-"

"i've been busy with work."

"busy with running away again, more like," and seungsoo takes a step closer, figure only lit up by the blue tinted porch lights, exposing his yellow eyes rather than the mist. it's no longer february. "you think you have any fucking right? sulking all the time."

kyungsoo makes to open the door but his wrist is grabbed by a hand that's a lot warmer than he's used to. "just because you have problems doesn't mean you can ignore other peoples'!"

he still doesn't want to talk about it.

"good night, seungsoo. safe journey home-"

and before he can even add a fullstop to a sentence, the smoke get's knocked out of him by a fist connected to a huge, dumb reminder of why he's so shitty. he gasps at first even though it was going to happen at some point, like there wasn’t a pile of voicemails commonly known as a buildup, or a mean stance in the way seungsoo levelled himself as he stood outside the door. and jongdae, sweet, clueful, jongdae had been on the phone with him. it was leading up to the strike of blood against seungsoo’s knuckles.

kyungsoo staggers back. his limbs are weak and courage weaker, seungsoo’s always had a body to wrap up in blankets too, but he’s enraged and the first to swing.

he’s the second aswell, this time his fist collides with kyungsoo’s ribs and they push uneasily against his heart. kyungsoo coughs up a mixture of saliva and blood before trying to speak.

“stop, you’ll kill me,” he says, voice sounding less pathetic than he’d imagined in his head, where it had been through a self- pitying filter.

“mam’s dead,” seungsoo repeats which you’d assume to be impossible through gritted teeth.

“she was bad to us.”

“you were bad to me!” he shouts. “you think i don’t know what she did?! i wanted to run too, you should’ve taken me! i’m fucking glad she’s dead! but i’m more angry at you for leaving me, you… you…”

“what’s going on here?” and there it is- the distinct noise of joonmyun’s boat shoes across tarmac, a noise that kyungsoo’s gotten used to after years of practically living with him. his voice is a dead giveaway aswell- sounds like how he looks but hopped up on helium. there’s a bouquet in his right hand, tipped downwards, yellow petals leaving a trail from the garden gate. “kyungsoo?”

“i should go,” says seungsoo, having the decency to only glare at kyungsoo before he turns away. “tell jongdae for me, alright joonmyun?”

“of course,” replies joonmyun and suddenly there’s a protective arm around kyungsoo’s shoulder. the pain’s spread everywhere.

“sunny… i’ll call you,” kyungsoo manages out just before he’s whisked back into the house, listening to joonmyun deny his request for a bottle of hard liquor to numb the pain.  _ we have medicine for that, kyungsoo, don’t be ridiculous. _

 

 

he takes the next day off work but tells jongdae not to do the same.

last night was rough, after he was put on the leather sofa and asked how his heart felt.  _ just the ribs,  _ he’d said, pushing his fingers between them so his shirt ended up creased. joonmyun left the flowers in the vase on the kitchen table. a surprise for jongdae,  _ “though we don’t really need another one, right?” _

 

kyungsoo thinks that the moment of truth- the moment he transformed like the picture of dorian grey- was when he was lying post-orgasm, cum in his hand and hand vaguely pumping his dick, and he thought to himself  _ hey, i’d love to snort cocaine off someone’s ass right now.  _ it wasn’t the s-e-x thing. it was more the fact that his mother died yesterday and sunny beat him up and he’d had to take a day off work because his heart wasn’t quite picked up from the porch ground just yet, and he could only feel jealous to clubgoers of all people.

the painting in his mind changed in that moment, and now, he’s still vaguely pumping his dick but instead of thinking about r-rated things he’s thinking about how he’s fucked up somewhere.

he begrudginly stands up, hand still sticky and fly undone, a pounding in the back of his head, and makes his way to the kitchen in all its offwhite modesty. he washes his hands and afterwards pours beer bottle after beer bottle down the sink.

 

portrait change-

kyungsoo, sitting on a wooden stool(out of sight to the camera), cue smile. his mouth curves weirdly as usual. some would describe him as handsome. his eyes go a bit watery from the flash, the photographer hums which means  _ try to look more natural _ and a second flash follows right after. he’s handed the photo in a brown envelope, admiring the lapels of his pinstripe suit to avoid looking at his face. 

 

kyungsoo, sitting on a wooden stool(out of sight to the camera), can’t smile because it makes his lips sting. some would describe him as a mess. his eyes go a bit watery from the swollen bruises surrounding them, the photographer pitifully hums which means  _ don’t know why you’d come in for a picture in this state  _ and the first flash follows right after. he’s handed the photo in a brown envelope, you can see where his shirt was grabbed before he got hit and he focuses on it to avoid looking at his face.

 

 

“kyungsoo,” says jongin, or  _ kyungshoo _ judging by his lisp. it’s cute in the simple way of how a sixteen year old’s voice doesn’t fit after getting braces. they’re sitting down against the same old wall, sipping tea from a thermos that stays between them so their sides heat up through the cold weather. krystal’s teaching a newbie how to wash artefacts(using a rock as an example because they’ve yet to find anything groundbreaking) just across the sectioned off dirt. “what happened to you?”

kyungsoo hums and continues to fiddle with jongin’s sleeve- something he’s been doing a lot of recently. clean 2 days, an honest to god miracle, jongdae made the happiest sound when kyungsoo took a bottle of coke out of the fridge just before dinner.  he’s not cured but dormant- much less happy now, even with this new(and unrightly deserved) sense of accomplishment. most of the time, jongin distracts him with his ease of tone. kyungsoo doesn’t even know him at all when he thinks about it, but he’s there for other people and an open book of code. letting you see the circuitboards without a handy ikea manual. “my mother died two days ago.”

“gosh, are you okay? i know how hard that is,” jongin replies, and he goes on and on with those commas of his. “you’re fine, but are you sure about work today? shouldn’t you take more, i don’t know, leave off? i’m so glad you told me at least, and, i’m always here to talk to-”

the last part isn’t so much the truth as a promise. jongin has other friends.  _ he’s nice.  _ and kyungsoo likes it a whole lot better that way, not too keen to become his manic pixie dream boy.

but still. they find eachother. when jongin’s eyes look for his during one of krystal’s lectures, when kyungsoo puts the kettle on for him right before he arrives, when there’s a part of them that says-

you know. they’re both afraid, like everyone else on earth, and it’s like two fears cancel out. and that makes it somewhat okay. not easy footing, but still rested.

in a different way, jongin knows kyungsoo as himself. so he says

“will you be alright?”- that’s future tense to you. kyungsoo shrugs, not yet aware of how upset he should be looking right about now.

he had cried last night for seungsoo. the seungsoo who doesn’t deserve a weak little brother and a motherly catalyst, but here kyungsoo is again with his nonchalant mannerisms on a perfectly average wednesday.

“i’m worried about my brother.”

“you’ll be alright, okay?”

“will be okay, alright?”

jongin smiles like he usually does- unknowingly coy, usually at kyungsoo’s expense, who gets hit in the shoulder. “tomorrow?”

“if you put the kettle on for me.”

 

 

jongdae blocks kyungsoo’s mother’s phone number from the landline. “forget her, you deserve it,” he says and fiddles with his shirt sleeves like he’s trying to find his pulse.

“thank you,” kyungsoo replies and goes back to being sober.

 

there are certain things that kyungsoo skims over, and almost all of them, jongin brings up.

they're still at the site during the last rain of march, to be done the job soon. the ground is completely excavated by this point and it's just meandering around. kyungsoo loves it, crouching down pretending to dig while jongin chatters on. except.

"when did you serve, or did you?"

"what?"

"in the military," says jongin, hands on his knees. they're knobbly and the caps seem to pop through his jeans. "when did you serve?"

kyungsoo feels a pipe in his heart block up at this and the pounding of his chest comes from both it and his hand, trying to keep his organs going. he coughs a bit. 

"sorry, maybe i shouldn't have asked."

 

kyungsoo lets him feel guilty.

 

 

 

 

"i served last year, got back in november, can't say i loved the freedom," jongin looks back at kyungsoo behind his curly hair, it'd be dark by now if it was february, but now they're getting the trail ends of the sun-through-rain. all grey.

"why not?" asks kyungsoo, admittedly not too experienced in matters such as 1) jongin's personal life 2) the military. but he goes ahead and asks anyway. if it's not about him, he won't prevent it.

"it leaves you a lot of time to-" he harshly shoves the spade into the ground- "think."

 

 

jongdae leaves for the weekend, and joonmyun along with him, doubt clouds up for a moment. are they going to come back? are they leaving kyungsoo alone in the house with- god forbid- alcohol? 

another trip to sink, two bottles wasted again, he shouldn't have to choose between money and self control. 

but he manages it, through some time spent wanking and some time spent digging through his old and thoroughly edgy cd collection, he makes it through an entire weekend sober and by himself.

 

cue april. it rains, of course, following its own nickname. the days stretch out and leave barely any night time, which is a shame, because kyungsoo functions best with closed blinds and an eight pack of blue ribbon on ice. he ends up at the dig site even though there's no work for him today.  jongin isn't there, but krystal still sits on her throne of a wooden chair, across from another woman. she gestures kyungsoo over and who is he to ignore?

"sit down," she says, stirring some more sugar into the tea on the table before nudging it over to the woman who smells like mosquito repellent. understandable, the insects swarmed last year in late april down in songgung-ni. kyungsoo takes the free seat that faces out to the stone wall.

"what are you doing here?" she asks, more curious than overbearing.

kyungsoo shrugs. "nothing else to do."

"weird, but i'll ignore it. this is amber," krystal gestures to the mosquito woman, who's smiling too wide for this early in the afternoon.

"hey," she pauses and kyungsoo hesitates before saying "kyungsoo."

"hey, kyungsoo!"

"anyway- i just wanted to check up on you. you've been a bit weird recently and jongin said something about-"

"i'm okay, just tired."

 

it’s a cold day in mid april when kyungsoo realises it. he’s an honest drunk, and even an honest person(blunt), and that’s what causes this all.

jongin fills a bucket by the outdoor tap- found more ophelite- and he’s wearing another stripey shirt, rolled up at the sleeves. the sun is out despite the temperature, like it’s barely a presence or a ghost of some sort, not even filling it’s role. he bleached his hair for supposedly the fourth time, “since the military”, and it shows in the still-intact curls.    
kyungsoo takes a step so there’s not much distance between their shoes.

“i didn’t go to the military,” he says at first, realising(not  _ the  _ realisation) the amount of trust he has. jongdae knows of such things, there since square one, and honestly kyungsoo knows a couple of things joonmyun doesn’t. jongdae. singing.

jongin turns around and squints at 1)the sun 2)kyungsoo’s statement 3)the proximity. “whyever not?” he asks and the water starts spilling out of the bucket, he yelps and twists the tap back off.

“my heart,” says kyungsoo, running a finger up the buttons on his shirt and slowing just where his top ribs meet. “it’s too weak.”

“physically, or-”

“yeah. i wasn’t allowed to go through service, i can’t even go to crowded places or it’ll seize up. pathetic, right? not even serving like everyone else.”

“you’re better off,” jongin laughs dryly before his eyes flicker from the water spilled all over his shoes back to kyungsoo. he stands up, and that doesn’t feel like enough, like when a familiar song comes on an ad but cuts off in the middle. like that, he makes no more moves towards kyungsoo. “i’m serious, you’re so lucky, i wish i didn’t have to go.”

kyungsoo eyes him weirdly and tries not to get angry. jongin is just a bit cluess sometimes with what he says, compliment this and compliment that, disregard this and disregard that, relate to this and relate to that. “is it that bad?”

“for me? yeah,” jongin’s speech seems to miss this beat that’s probably just in kyungsoo’s head. he’s imagining things again. “yeah… no, forget i said anything.”   
he realises that jongin’s a bit fucked up by something or other. (like he didn’t know before)

 

kyungsoo understands that jongin has problems too, he really does, and he should’ve expected it. but it still makes him a bit infuriated for no reason at all.

maybe he’s becoming yifan, he thinks and drops his glass on the ground. it shatters everywhere.

“did it hit you?” asks joonmyun, looking at kyungsoo with wide eyes as he enters the room.

“no, i’m fine,” kyungsoo replies and fetches the dustpan.

 

 

 

...he doesn’t want to become yifan.

“your hair looks nice like that, jongin.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> part one


End file.
